Harris County DA Mike Anderson: if it looks like drugs, arrest ’em!

As expected, new Harris County District Attorney Mike Anderson has reversed former DA Pat Lykos’ common sense “trace case” policy with his own – er, I mean, with the “judgment” of the police officer on the scene:

From: Bill Moore
Sent: Wed 1/23/2013 2:03 PM
To: All DA Employees

News from the front:

A charge against an individual for possession of a residue or trace amount of a Penalty Group 1 or penalty Group 2 controlled substance will be accepted at Intake and filed as a state jail felony if the residue or trace amount is visible and testable.

This includes visible and testable residue present on crack pipes, Brillo pads, syringes, baggies, mirrors, straws, razor blades, etc. During an Intake screening call with the arresting officer, an emphasis should be placed on the officer’s description of the residue. You will need to determine based upon the officer’s description whether or not a sufficient amount of controlled substance remains to be tested.

So, if po-po on the scene says, “looks like crack to me”, then, hell yeah, accept the charge! Enough to retest? Who cares? It’s just someone’s life at stake! And we all know that the awesome Houston Police Department Crime Lab never makes mistakes, so retest, schmetest, arrest that thug!

If HPD comes back and says “Yeah, that miniscule amount of substance you sent us was actually drugs… but no, it can’t be retested because it was entirely destroyed in the course of our conducting our highly-reliable test,” the DAO will prosecute you for a state jail felony!

I don’t know about you, but I sure do feel safer! Who needs a District Attorney that urges caution before ruining people’s lives? I’m a Republican and by gawd, we got to have people put away regardless of innocence!

Now, I might, just might, think differently if my skin color wasn’t white and I didn’t live way out in the ‘burbs. Good luck to those folks that aren’t white and don’t live in the ‘burbs.